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Hi All,
I'm not a moderator or anything here, but I've successfully built & load tested a couple of SSGs now, which took me a number of years to succeed in. I've seen some posts regarding insufficient free-spin times for the magnet-loaded wheels & would like to pass on an important technique which was imparted to me from John Smith in Western Australia, whom I believe is / was a member on this forum recently. I'm not sure where this technique came from originally, but if it was indeed John Smith's own, then he deserves full credit for this & should he find this post, he may feel free to add to it if he wishes.
When building my first SSG, I became quite frustrated to see the wheel I'd spent many hours, days & weeks carefully measuring to the half-millimetre & loading with magnets (glued on with Liquid Nails Ultimate Strength - which, I believe is another one of John S's marvellous techniques), come to a grinding halt after about eight & a bit minutes and then rock back & forth until settling to a stand-still. Currently, the wheels on both of my builds can be spun (without coils) for eleven and a half minutes, with no rocking whatsoever & glide through to a very, very slow & smooth stop (very satisfying to watch!). It will cost you many hours in time, but nothing or almost nothing in extra costs for materials, & you should have a perfectly balanced wheel in the end, which will yield much better results each & every time you tune the device or use it to charge batteries. This, I believe, will become even more important should we wish to or need to run these SSGs off of Crystal Batteries.
Give your wheel a big spin - hard as you can - & wait for it to come to a complete stop after all the rocking has finished. Mark the top of the wheel, on the wheel, against a fixed position or another mark on your SSG. This mark should be at the very top or Top Dead Centre of the wheel. Repeat the process, adding a real big blob of glue (possibly with some other heavy non-ferrous material mixed in it, like brass) at this point should it come up to the mark again. Keep repeating the process with progressively smaller blobs of glue (I used - you guessed it - Liquid Nails, mostly on its own, because it's very tacky & the wheel can be spun immediately after it has been applied without it coming off), until your wheel never comes to rest in the same place twice. You can expect the whole process to take around six or so hours, so find something else to do whilst the wheel is spinning or you might be driven insane watching a spinning wheel. Liquid Nails takes about a week to dry to its full strength, so re-balance your wheel using the same procedure after about a week to check it at least. My builds never needed this, maybe due to the even-ness of blob placement, but it pays to check. Now time it from when you stop spinning it until it comes to rest. Congratulations on breaking the eight point five minute "glass ceiling"!
Let me know if you can beat eleven & a half minutes consistently.
I'm not a moderator or anything here, but I've successfully built & load tested a couple of SSGs now, which took me a number of years to succeed in. I've seen some posts regarding insufficient free-spin times for the magnet-loaded wheels & would like to pass on an important technique which was imparted to me from John Smith in Western Australia, whom I believe is / was a member on this forum recently. I'm not sure where this technique came from originally, but if it was indeed John Smith's own, then he deserves full credit for this & should he find this post, he may feel free to add to it if he wishes.
When building my first SSG, I became quite frustrated to see the wheel I'd spent many hours, days & weeks carefully measuring to the half-millimetre & loading with magnets (glued on with Liquid Nails Ultimate Strength - which, I believe is another one of John S's marvellous techniques), come to a grinding halt after about eight & a bit minutes and then rock back & forth until settling to a stand-still. Currently, the wheels on both of my builds can be spun (without coils) for eleven and a half minutes, with no rocking whatsoever & glide through to a very, very slow & smooth stop (very satisfying to watch!). It will cost you many hours in time, but nothing or almost nothing in extra costs for materials, & you should have a perfectly balanced wheel in the end, which will yield much better results each & every time you tune the device or use it to charge batteries. This, I believe, will become even more important should we wish to or need to run these SSGs off of Crystal Batteries.
Give your wheel a big spin - hard as you can - & wait for it to come to a complete stop after all the rocking has finished. Mark the top of the wheel, on the wheel, against a fixed position or another mark on your SSG. This mark should be at the very top or Top Dead Centre of the wheel. Repeat the process, adding a real big blob of glue (possibly with some other heavy non-ferrous material mixed in it, like brass) at this point should it come up to the mark again. Keep repeating the process with progressively smaller blobs of glue (I used - you guessed it - Liquid Nails, mostly on its own, because it's very tacky & the wheel can be spun immediately after it has been applied without it coming off), until your wheel never comes to rest in the same place twice. You can expect the whole process to take around six or so hours, so find something else to do whilst the wheel is spinning or you might be driven insane watching a spinning wheel. Liquid Nails takes about a week to dry to its full strength, so re-balance your wheel using the same procedure after about a week to check it at least. My builds never needed this, maybe due to the even-ness of blob placement, but it pays to check. Now time it from when you stop spinning it until it comes to rest. Congratulations on breaking the eight point five minute "glass ceiling"!
Let me know if you can beat eleven & a half minutes consistently.
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